the hogs and hippopotami, the lowest of the Artiodactyla. Now in progression on dry land, any preëxistent inequality in the length of the digits would tend to become exaggerated. Such an inequality exists in the Amblypoda, the third digit being a little the longer. In rapid movement on hard ground the longest toe receives the greatest part of the impact, even if its excess of length is but little. The harder the ground the larger the proportion of impact it will receive.

The fact that the Perissodactyla did not develop the solidungulate or equine foot, until a late geological period, or in other words, that the orders so long retained the digital formula 4-3, would indicate that it did not adopt a habitat which required great speed as a condition of safety, so early as the Artiodactyla.

PROGRESS OF INVERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES FOR THE YEAR 1880.

BY DR. C. A, WHITE.

HE palæontological work of 1880 has been done mainly by the same persons whose works were noticed in the NATURALIST's review for 1879. None have died during the past year, and at least one new worker has appeared in the ranks of American palæontologists. With one important exception the channels for the publication of the results of palæontological work remains the same as last year. Palæontology has suffered a serious loss in the closing of the important channel of publication which was for so many years afforded by the Government Survey under the direction of Dr. Hayden. At present, therefore, no great works of well illustrated invertebrate palæontology are in progress, except those of New York, Ohio and Wisconsin, but more especially that of the first-named State.

Dr. Charles Barrois, of Lille, France, published in the Revue Scientifique (Paris), for September, 1880, a review of Volume v, Part II, Palæontology of New York, by Professor James Hall; and a translation of the same was published in the January, 1881, number of the American Journal of Science. In that review Dr. Barrois gives, besides a summary of the contents of the volume, some interesting discussion of the relation of the Devonian. Gas

teropoda, Pteropoda and Cephalopoda of the New York rocks. with those of Europe.

Dr. J. W. Dawson, in the November, 1880, number of the American Journal of Science, published a "Revision of the Land Snails of the Palæozoic Era, with Descriptions of New Species;" pages 403-415, with numerous wood-cuts. In this paper Dr. Dawson describes the following species, the second and last being new forms: Pupa vetusta Dawson, with the variety tenuistriata Dawson, Pupa bigsbyi Dawson, P. vermillionensis Bradley, Zonites (Conulus) priscus Carpenter, Dawsonella meeki Bradley, Strophites grandava Dawson. The descriptions are accompanied with interesting discussions of the relations of these shells with living forms.

In the January, 1880, number of the American Journal of Science, page 50, Professor W. B. Dwight has given an account of his discoveries of fossils in the Wappinger valley, or Barnegat limestone of Duchess county, N. Y., which is a continuation of the subject as treated by him in the May, 1879, number of the same journal. In this article he has enumerated many well-known forms belonging to the Trenton and Calciferous epochs, and proposed the name Discina conica for a new form which he refers to the age of the Trenton limestone; and which, in the June, 1880, number of the Journal, he describes and figures under the name of Orbiculoidea conica. Professor Dwight has also a brief article on the same subject in the January, 1881, number of the same journal, in which he claims for the lower series of those rocks the existence of "a wealth of Cephalopodic life of a character and abundance hitherto unknown in the United States in any formation to which it is likely to belong, i. e., below the Trenton and Black River strata." He proposes to publish full details of his discoveries, with further results.

Mr. S. W. Ford has a note in the February, 1880, number of the American Journal of Science, on the Atops trilineatus of Emmons, in which he claims that the species figured by Emmons in his Taconic System, p. 20, and in the Agricultural Report of New York, Vol. 1, p. 64, is not Triarthrus beckii, as supposed by Hall and Walcott, but that it belongs to the genus Conocoryphe.

Professor James Hall is still prosecuting his great work on the Palæontology of New York. Part II, of Vol. v, has been issued since my summary of last year's palæontological work was writ

ten, and Dr. Barrois' review of the same has already been noticed.

It is expected that Part 1, of Vol. v, will soon be issued, and Vol. Vi is also well in progress, thirty-nine of the plates being already engraved. During the past year Professor Hall has published, under the title "Corals and Bryozoans of the Lower Helderberg group," a pamphlet of thirty-eight pages, referring to twenty-two of the plates of Vol. vi, which volume is to be especially rich in those forms. He informs me that he has in preparation a supplement to Vol. v, Part 11, for which there are already sixteen plates engraved. He also published, in the December, 1880, number of Science, a "Note on the relations of the Oneonta and Montrose sandstones of Vanuxem, and their relation to the sandstones of the Catskill mountains," which, although mainly geological, is still of considerable palæontological interest. Professor Hall states that the Oneonta sandstone is not a part of the Chemung group, as has been supposed, but that it constitutes a separate series of strata, the true position of which is between the Hamilton and Chemung groups, and expresses the opinion that those strata were deposited under "estuary and fresh-water conditions." He regards those shells which characterize these strata, and which were described by Vanuxem as Cypricardites cattskillensis and C. angusta as belonging to the genus Anodonta.

Professor A. Hyatt has nearly completed his illustrated memoir on the Ammonites of the Lower Lias, which is to be published by the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, Mass.

Dr. G. Hambach has an interesting "Contribution to the Anatomy of the Genus Pentremites, with Description of New Species," in Vol. IV, Transactions St. Louis Academy Science, pp. 145-160, with two lithograph plates. He has in hand a monograph of all the known American and European forms of the Blastoideæ.

The appointment of Mr. Angelo Heilprin as Professor of Invertebrate Palæontology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia is a gratifying indication of progressive spirit in that well-known institution. In Vol. III, of the Proceedings of the U. S. National Museum, is to appear an article from his pen entitled, "On some New Species of Eocene Mollusca from the Southern United States," embracing pages 149-152, and accompanied with one plate of illustrations. He has also prepared an

article for publication in the Proceedings of the Academy "On some new Lower Eocene Mollusca from Clark county, Alabama, with some points as to the stratigraphical position of the beds containing them." Professor Heilprin has also completed the preparation of a "Revision of the Eocene Mollusca of the Eastern and Southern United States," which, when published, will constitute a much needed addition to our palæontological literature.

Mr. S. A. Miller has continued his publications in the Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History during the past year. He began a series of articles, mainly historical, in the October, 1879, number of the Journal, entitled "North American Mesozoic and Cenozoic Geology and Palæontology," which he has continued in each subsequent number to that of January, 1881. He in. forms me that it will be completed in the next April number, and that the whole series will embrace upwards of three hundred pages. In the January, 1880, number, Mr. Miller has three palæontological articles, entitled respectively, "Silurian Ichnolites, with definitions of new genera and species;" "Descriptions of two new species from the Niagara group and five from the Keokuk group;" and Note upon the habits of some fossil Annelids; the two first mentioned being illustrated. In the first named of these three articles he proposes six new generic names for as many different kinds of tracks which he has found upon the Lower Silurian slaty shales near Cincinnati. The July and October, 1880, number, and the January, 1881, number of the Journal, each contains an illustrated palæontological article from his pen, entitled respectively, "Description of four new species of Silurian fossils;" "Description of four new species and one variety of Silurian fossils;" and "Description of five new species of Silurian fossils, and remarks upon an undetermined form." Mr. Miller has also completed the MS. of catalogue of the North American Mesozoic and Cenozoic fossils, upon the same general plan of his catalogue of Palæozoic fossils published a few years ago, which he hopes soon to publish.

Professor A. S. Packard, Jr., in the July, 1880, number of the AMERICAN NATURALIST, has an instructive illustrated article on "The structure of the eye of Trilobites." In concluding this article Professor Packard says, "I now feel authorized in claiming that the Trilobite's eye was organized on the same plan as that of the Limulus, and thus when we add the close resemblance in the

larval forms, in the general anatomy of the body-segments, and the fact demonstrated by. Mr. Walcott that the Trilobites had jointed, round limbs (and probably membranous ones), we are led to believe that the two groups of Merostomata and Trilobites are sub-divisions or orders of one and the same sub-class of Crustacea for which we have previously proposed the term Paleocarida." In his memoir on the Anatomy and Embryology of Limulus, he also makes direct structural comparisons of the eyes of Trilobites and Limulus.

Mr. Samuel H. Scudder has published in the Bulletin of the Harvard College Library two installments of his Bibliography of Fossil Insects, and a third installment will soon be out. He has also completed a memoir on the Devonian Insects of New Brunswick for the Boston Society of Natural History, the general conclusions of which have appeared in the form of an article in the American Journal of Science for February. Besides these works he has in hand a paper on the geology and paleontology of Florissante, Colorado; and another on the structure and affinities of Euphorberia M. & W.

Advance sheets of two posthumous articles by the late Wm. M. Gabb, edited by Geo. W. Tryon, Jr., have lately been issued by the Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia. They are entitled respectively, "Descriptions of Caribbean Miocene Fossils," and "Descriptions of New Species of Fossils from the Pliocene clay beds between Limon and Moen, Costa Rica, together with notes on previously known species from there and elsewhere in the Caribbean area." They comprise together pp. 337-380, and plates 44-47, inclusive, of the Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad. (2). Vol. VIII. In the latter paper Mr. Gabb has proposed the new generic name of Parkeria for a group of gastropods (not Parkeria Carpenter and Brady, a genus of Foraminifera).

Lieut. A. W. Vogdes published in the Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad. for 1880, p. 176, “Description of a new Crustacean, Calymene rostrata, from the Upper Silurian of Georgia, with remarks upon Calymene clintoni." Four wood-cuts.

Messrs. Wachsmuth and Springer have in press the second part of their Revision of the Palæocrinoidea, and also a supplement to the first part. It is the intention of the authors to complete this important work as soon as practicable.

Mr. C. D. Walcott has been long absent upon distant field